The Alliance of Women Entrepreneurship Program (AWEP), Ethiopian Chapter was officially launched on March 12,  with a ceremony held at the Radisson Blu Hotel.

The Chapter's stated mission is empowering women entrepreneurs and helping them connect to the international market. Although officially inaugurated this week in Ethiopia, Alliance of Women Entrepreneurship Program has been in existence since 2006, informally known as the Women Entrepreneurs Group (WEG).

"The former US ambassador to Ethiopia, Vicki Huddleston invited most of the founding members of WEG for morning coffee at the American Embassy to discuss how we can help to empower women in our community and create a voice. After several meetings, which continued during the tenure of former Ambassador Donald Yamamato and now with the current Ambassador Donald Booth, WEG was formalized and registered back in December 2010,” said Hikmet Abdella, Member of AWEP.

Speaking on the occasion, Nigist Haile, AWEP Ambassador to Ethiopia, stated that the launch of the chapter shows the successes women are registering. “This month, we celebrated the International Women’s Day with the establishment of Enat Bank, a bank that has shares mostly owned by women. That is a great celebration for us and this makes everything even grander,” she said.

This year's African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) forum, which will be held in June 2013 will be hosted by Ethiopia. The AGOA forum will also feature the AWEP parallel forum along with the Ministerial Forum, Private Sector Forum, and Civil Society Forum.

The AWEP Ethiopia chapter is linked with the different AWEP chapters in other countries and the concerned AWEP coordinators at the State Department in the US.

The Ethiopian chapter will be providing different support services to its members, such as training and knowledge enhancement, provision of a platform for networking, facilitation of export market linkages as well as providing outreach and leadership development programs.

Currently the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurship Program, Ethiopian Chapter has 50 members.

Source: Capital